Friday, 19 June 2009

Invention time again. Though I think a better phrase might be innovation. On my list of things to do before I die (alongside of 'make a necklace from a bullet that I have been shot with' and 'fire someone'), is 'Make a gauss or rail gun'. I'm sure that a lot of you haven't heard of either, and others will know it only from Half-Life games. Here's a quick layman's description, written by a layman.

A rail gun uses the magnetic force (called the Lorentz force), produced when a conductive object moves simultaneously along 2 rails. One of these rails is positively charged, the other negatively.

A gauss (or coil) gun uses one or more coils of wire around the barrel of a gun to attract the metal projectile towards and through it. These are often set up in sequence to produce a series of accelerating events.